Saturday, September 30, 2017

London in May

It's odd. The temperature drops, and suddenly I want yarn in my hands and I'm all about blogging. I guess the summer must be over! So I'm going to start by taking us back to when I fell off the radar in May, and talk about London.

As you may have guessed by now, my husband and I really enjoy London- it's a wonderful city to walk around in, full of museums and restaurants. We've rather embraced the Samuel Johnston quote, "When a man is tired of London, he is tired of life." Seeing as this was a busy travel year, we decided that rather than rushing hither and yon, trying to cover new ground, that we would rather just stay in London, with perhaps occasional day trips.

Our first destination was the Borough Market, filled with good things to eat. We weren't the only ones headed that way.

He appeared to be looking for friends, so we continued on to the market. Our biggest problem there is there are so many choices! I eventually settled on a roasted pork sandwich, and a bowl of fresh local fruit- it was strawberry season.

We did a lot of walking. London in May is a fabulous time to see the gardens. Here's St. James Park.

We took a train one day up to Peterborough for a day to visit with friends. Their cats made us feel like quite one of the family.

We went to the Museum of Londons Docklands, to see an excellent exhibit on the archeological finds made during the construction of the new Crossrail Tube line. As a feat of civil engineering alone it was amazing- 26 miles of new tunnel under London- construction started in 2009, and it will finish next year- on time and on budget. But they not only built it- they had archeologists working with them at every step to preserve as much as possible of the artifacts they dug up in the process. The deepest tunnels went well past any human habitation, but brought up 55 million year old fossilized amber and bones. Every layer of the region's history was intersected by the excavations- from prehistoric, to Bronze age to Victorian and modern.

We also took a walking tour of the Canary Wharf area. After fits and starts over the last 30 years, it's become very trendy and upscale. I especially liked the new Crossrail station, which has an indoor garden featuring many of the plants brought from across the British Empire.

From there we walked down the Thames Path. Most of the week was nice, but this was a particularly lovely day.

We happened on the site of the launching of the Great Eastern, which was the ship that laid the first Atlantic telegraph cable. I'd read about it The Great Iron Ship by James Dugan many years ago. (My dad is an amateur historian with a special interest in the Atlantic Cable.) I hadn't realized the site still existed though, until we found it.

From there, we took the pedestrian tunnel to Greenwich, and had dinner, wandered about town and then headed back to the city center. And here I'll break- this covers the first few days of the trip. I've broken this into sections rather than trying to give a day by day, meal by meal account!